Virginia Blackburn

HEARD the one about the oh-how-hilarious dad who pretended to drop his daughter’s wedding cake? Andy Todd, a clear winner in the Britain’s biggest prat stakes, picked up the three-tiered cake during the wedding of his daughter Dina to Johnny Smart and, to the clear shock of the guests, dropped it on the floor. His daughter could be heard begging him not to touch it, several present screamed as it crashed out of his hands. But fear not: it wasn’t the real cake, which was hidden in the background. So that’s all right then. Except actually it’s not.

I hate practical jokes with a vengeance. They are always, bar none, designed to humiliate someone and this case was no different. The plonker of a father said: “I didn’t want to make it last too long. I didn’t want her to cry and have mascara running down her face.”

So why do it in the first place? This was his daughter’s wedding reception, for goodness’ sake, supposed to be the happiest day of her life. It is also exactly the sort of occasion on which emotions are running high and on which a bride might well burst into tears if she thinks the show has been ruined. How, in any way whatsoever, will this have contributed to the day?

No practical joke is ever funny, ever. They are all predicated on the fact that someone will be made to look stupid but be forced to take it in good humour because it was a “joke”. Sometimes these things go badly wrong and no wonder because you are inviting people to laugh at someone, not with them, and you are also creating a victim in the process. And in the